Since the creator of this classic solitaire wargame passed away not long ago, I figured that I better purchase the latest version (plus expansions) while I could. Dunno if there will be any more made once the stock is gone; rumor has it his widow is filling orders for what is left.

Just pulled it out of the shrink ~~>

Had lost my old copy back somewhere back in the late '90s. Didn't realize there was a new print run a few years ago, with an updated look and some small changes/additions.

It's an interesting and unusual solitaire game that mixes map plotting of your missions, squad & equipment selection, and a book that can only be compared to "choose your own adventure" paragraph-jumping decisions & events for small unit missions in enemy territory. The author was reportedly a Ranger, so .. yeah.

This vid on it was in my YouTube recommended list, and tipped me off that it was still temporarily in print.

Dunno how many of you collect/read/play tabletop RPGs, but Bundle of Holding (DriveThruRPG's bundle sale site) has asale on Deadlands Reloaded bundles, which also includes the requisite Savage Worlds Deluxe RPG rules. The olde "Weird West" setting.

Starts at ~$21 for both sets of PDFs, including Marshal's Guide which is essential.

Superb tabletop RPG. Highly recommend reading it in regards to running a narrative sandbox campaign, and GM'ing in general. Even if you don't use this ruleset, which is pretty light & flexible, but you'll probably want to because the DW book is a very inspirational read.

Unfortunately, in the Banana's estimation (as a fan of Paizo's stuff up till now), it's a steaming pile of shite. Let the edition wars break out again!

But. YMMV.

I've not checked it out. Why is Pathfinder 2 a shitfest?

Gimme the straight Banana. I'm curious about what's different, and how good or bad that may be, but don't wanna spend the time pouring through the playtest PDF to compare & contrast. Already have far too many sitting around my place waiting to be read (including Starfinder).

Gimme the straight Banana. I'm curious about what's different, and how good or bad that may be, but don't wanna spend the time pouring through the playtest PDF to compare & contrast. Already have far too many sitting around my place waiting to be read (including Starfinder).

Well, bear in mind I like a bit of roleplaying with my gaming, and I don't like things to be too boardgamey/videogamey... so it ain't the game for me. Almost all my gripes stem from that. If I want to play a wargame or a computer game, I play one. I don't look for that experience when breaking out an FRPG.

1) The proficiency system. I hated it in 4th/5th, I hate it here too. Basically PF1, everybody starts as level 0, 0 is the base. Then you trowel on abilities on top. So Clod the Barbarian who is level 10, has had 10 levels of being a better barbarian, and so is very good at it. However he hasn't had 10 levels of being a thief, so he's not better at that (unless he put some spare points into it).

In PF2 the base is your level. Everything is Your Level + Ability Score + Proficiency Bonus + <other mods>. Clod the level 10 barbarian thus has +10 diplomacy, before we've even started, because he's level 10. So our Clod is better at schmoozing than a level 1 noblewoman bard, even if he's never put a point or taken a nod at anything diplomatic. Similarly, with AC, a level 10 wizard is getting AC 20 because its 10 + Level, before we've done anything else at all. So he's harder to hit than a level 1 fighter with full plate on.

This pisses me off. It submerges differences, it makes everybody the same. (Really the only thing to distinguish your level 10 wizard from Clod is their ability scores. The proficiency bonus is measly, and ranges between -2 and +2, but if you get +1 you're doing pretty well. So Nerd the level 10 wizard has +10 to hit, + his strength bonus. Clod has +10 to hit, +1 with his axe because he's probably expert, + his strength which will be 18 (more on that later) so +15? The differences are not nearly as drastic. Everybody is the same.

I'm playing a level 8 sorcerer in a game atm, and my armour class is the same as when I was level 2. This means the low level guards are a problem for me. They wouldn't be in PF2, hell I'd probably be beating them up with my staff in preference to anything else (more on that later...).

High level play in PF1 is fun because people are so extreme in their specialty. In PF2 they've simply abolished it because now the baseline is much closer to everybody else. Your super sneaky rogue? Is gonna be a bit more sneaky than the fighter. I don't think thats 'fixing high level balance' I think that's making high level the same as level 1, a different beast.

2) The ability system. I like my attributes to be descriptive, the whole point of the game is to describe characters after all. But in this you get so many attributes its going to be a bunch of 18s.

For example, a PF1 paladin might have Strength 14, Dex 12, Con 14, Intelligence 13, Wisdom 7, Charisma 20 at level 10. This tells me a story - naive, not particularly meaty, fairly quick witted, very likeable/angelic. A female hospitaller paladin? While a paladin with Strength 20, Dex 10, Con 14, Intelligence 10, Wisdom 12, Charisma 14 strikes me as a more stolid, stalwart sort. Maybe a kindly old drill instructor type with two long moustaches? And both are playable as paladins, they'd be effective, in different ways.

The PF2 system, all attributes are 10, plus 2 for every boost you get. Races offer boosts, a background offers boosts, you get 3 bonus boosts, and every 5 level you get 4 bonus boosts, and your class gives you 1 boost in the prime stat. You cant boost something more than once per type ( 'being human' gets you two boosts, but you cant put them both in the same stat because its the same source. Etc.). Nothing higher than 18 at level 1. Boosts past level 1 can up things higher than 18 but they are +1 not +2 (so a boost of a stat at 18 means it becomes 19, not 20).

The upshot is is that its a) Extremely generous b) Extremely spread out. A level 10 paladin in PF2 might have stats like Strength 18, Dex 16, Con 18, Intelligence 10, Wisdom 10, Charisma 18. That tells me nothing about that character, beyond that it's an ur-paladin. It's just... number soup. It doesn't have a personality attached, any more than your stats do in World of Warcraft. Also while in PF1 you might dump a stat to nudge another one up a bit that's not really possible now, so it actually encourages min-maxing over characterisation I think. Say you're level 5, you're a paladin, you can pick 4 different abilities to up. Well, they are gonna be Strength, Constitution and Charisma and 1 other. If you don't pick that you're committing hari-kiri. And the end result is every one of those will end up 18, as described.

I think it's shit. It's not very descriptive. Everything ends up samey.

Note that because ability scores are about the only way in which character A is distinguished from character B due to the way proficiencies work, if for some reason you played a paladin and decided for the sake of argument to not boost your strength, for some reason - when the wizard has more strength than you he will be better at fighting than you are. You would completely fuck yourself.

3) Magic. It's been completely gutted. They said they'd balance the magic/martial disparity, well, they've done it by reducing mages to human guns. The amount of non-damaging spells in here that havn't been completely buttfucked to uselessness I can count on the fingers of one hand. Dim door? Only works to line of sight. Baleful polymorph? Will polymorph someone for 1 minute. Animate dead? Gone. Pretty much no spell in the entire game has a duration longer than a minute now. The only spells that seem genuinely effective are the blast 'em spells and the cures.

If you're a caster you're gonna do two things - Blow stuff up. Heal people. Utility destroyed. It's not magic in a literary sense, it's board game magic, computer game magic. When I read the baleful polymorph changes, I'm thinking less Circe turning people into pigs, and more World of Warcraft. The base classes are worse too ( a sorcerer gets a maximum of 3 spells to cast per level. So a level 8 sorcerer has something like 3/3/3/2 for their spells per day). The buttfucking is from all sides.

4) General weakness. You can customise your characters with class feats now, so you gain a level, you get a class feat. So if you're a paladin, Divine Health is not something they all get, you spend a class feat for that. The end result is that stuff you got as a given in PF1 you now have to spend feats for. If you're a paladin you won't get Divine Health and Mercy, you'll have to pick one. Also what they do is shit, too. Divine health is +1 on disease saves. Divine grace is +1 on saves vs spells. The former used to be immunity, the lattter gave you your charisma bonus to all saves.

The end results are really shitty characters compared to PF1. Of course, everybody is equally shit compared to PF1 but that's not selling it to me. Everybody is equal, and shit, at all times, is pretty much the designing principle as far as I can tell.

5) Resonance. They didn't like wands of cure light wounds. Now you have a stat called Resonance. Use a potion, it costs you a resonance point. Don a cloak of elvenkind, it costs you a resonance point. You get one point per level, plus your charisma. All this because wands of cure light annoyed some PFS players? Again, immersion ruined. I'm playing a computer game.

6) Feats for fucking everything. Now everybody is the same I guess they had to put this in. So, Sleight of Hand is now the Thievery proficiency. You can take that, okay. You still can't pick pockets though. Picking pockets is a skill feat. You could be a legendary thief but you can't pick pockets without the feat. You get two skill feats a level so it's not very restrictive, but what the fuck. In PF1 it's organic, you put points into sleight of hand from various sources, if you get it up to decent levels, you can pick pockets. This makes sense. In PF2 there's no 'getting it up to decent levels' because everything is the same, there's just these weird gatekeeping feats where either you can attempt it with reasonable success or you can't.

7) Incredibly persnickety combat actions. There's an action for shifting your grip (ie, holding a sword in two hands, switching to holding it in one hand). WTF. Used to be you could do that for free. Now it's all about is your shield up, is your hand free, can you maneuver around to make your hand free and then grab shield, all in the course of one go because you want to cast a spell. Make no mistake, it's still a complicated game. It's just a complicated game with bland characters.

Oh and they got rid of attacks of opportunity, now it's a fighter class thing. So the idea of standing in the way to protect someone, gone. Baddies walk around you, no problem. Of course, it won't matter because the wizards have decent AC now anyway because all are equal. (They can even wear all armours by default, having proficiency in an armour skill just gives you an AC bonus).

I think it's just clearly not aimed at people like me, who've been playing PF since it came out and are pretty nailed on as that being the ur-game for fantasy RPGs. PF2 is a mutant lovechild of D&D4 and D&D5, two games I've been playing PF to expressly avoid. It's shitty characterisation mechanics pretty much rule me out, so I won't be able to marvel at how "balanced" it all is. I think the Pathfinder Society mode of playing has a lot to answer for - they basically wanted a finely balanced tactical miniatures wargame, not an RPG, and now they have one.

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